Body camera footage from the Butler Township, Pennsylvania, Police Department, obtained by Fox News Digital through a records request on Thursday, shows an officer attempting to help people after the July 13 assassination attempt on President Trump.
“This is way beyond my pay grade. Whoever comes, I need an empire,” the officer can be heard saying at about 3 minutes 40 seconds into the footage, which was filmed just seven minutes after gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks began shooting from the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building, just outside the rally’s perimeter.
“We heard that someone was looking out the window. We don’t know who was inside,” the officer added, presumably referring to the inside of the AGR building.
Other body camera footage released Thursday showed officers from different agencies confused as to why there were no officers on the roof of the AGR and why Crooks went unnoticed.
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Police are on the roof of the AGR Building in Butler, Pennsylvania, following the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Trump. (Butler County Police Department)
There was also confusion about whether Crooks had been neutralized or whether he remained a threat minutes after the shooting.
Two Butler police officers originally assigned to traffic control went to the AGR building just seconds before the shooting to get a better look at the roof after receiving a report that someone might be on top of the building. Body camera footage shows one officer pushing another onto the roof to get a better look at Crooks.
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Butler Township Supervisor Thomas Knights previously told Fox News Digital in an interview that an officer looking on the roof saw Crooks pointing a rifle at himself, then lost his balance and fell to the ground.
“When police arrived in the immediate vicinity of the building following a suspicious person call, they conducted a perimeter search, but could not see anyone on the roof of the building from their vantage point,” Knights explained at the time. “So one of the other officers literally… [other officers] I was high enough in the air to grab the edge of the roof.”
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With no other access to the roof at the time, the officer managed to pull himself up until his “head was above the roof,” Knights said. The distance from the ground to the edge of the roof where the officer grabbed was about 12 feet.
A building adjacent to the Butler Farm Show, the venue for former President Trump’s campaign rallies, was photographed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 15. Suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from the roof of the complex on July 13 in an assassination attempt, wounding Trump. (AP Photo/Jean J. Puskar)
“Officers did observe an individual on the roof,” Knights said. “The individual was confirmed to have a weapon” and “pointed the weapon at officers.”
The officer assumed a defensive position from where he was hanging from the edge of the roof and lowered his head, but his grip weakened, at which point he fell “approximately eight feet” to the ground and sprained his ankle, the town manager explained.
In additional video released Thursday, an officer can be heard saying he had “instructed” the Secret Service to send officers to the roof of the building.
“I told them on f**king Tuesday. I told them to send them over here.”
“I told them they need to get some Secret Service guys in here,” the officer said.
“I thought you guys were on the roof,” another officer can be heard saying.
“No, we were inside,” the first officer says.
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The Secret Service responded to the footage in a statement Thursday night, saying it was aware of the video from local police.
“The Secret Service thanks our local law enforcement partners who acted bravely that day to locate the shooter. The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a failure of the Secret Service, and we are reviewing and updating our security policies and procedures to ensure such a tragedy never happens again,” the statement said.
